Dear editor,
The news (Comox Valley Record, Feb 9, 2017) that Glacier View Lodge will be partnering with St. Joseph鈥檚 Hospital and Providence Health Care may be exciting to some, but it will be worrying to anyone who is concerned about faith-based organizations increasing their hold on health care in the Valley.
Providence Health Care is a very large Catholic health care provider which, like St. Joseph鈥檚, prohibits medical assistance in dying (MAiD) in all of its facilities. Clearly, Glacier View Lodge, which is home to 102 seniors, will become another place where suffering patients, if they want and are eligible for a medically assisted death, will have to leave through a physically and psychologically distressing transfer to another facility in order to satisfy the orders of the Catholic church. Most people will not choose MAiD at the end of their lives. However, those that do should not have their suffering added simply to satisfy the dogma of others.
In a community where only 12 per cent of the population is Catholic, and in a province where 87 per cent of people support MAiD, this expansion of religious control over the lives of the citizens of the Comox Valley is to be deplored. At a time when the community is fighting to get the new hospice built in a non-faith-based, secular site, it is extremely insensitive for the church to move to expand its hold on health care.
Dr. Jonathan Reggler
Courtenay
